Previews

Family Guy

As we find Peter, he's hit in the noggin while watching Mr. Belvedere, knocking him out cold. When he comes to, he can't seem to find his family, and seeing as he's mildly retarded, Peter figures that the prissy English butler has kidnapped his family. Peter's portions of the game play similarly to that of an action arcade game in the vein of the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and X-Men games, with Peter pummeling the living hell out of children and old folks who impede his search. Through different levels, Peter will suffer concussions which will force him to take on different personalities, including that of a prostitute, and the blaxploitation film star Rufus Griffin (of Black to the Future fame).

The non sequiturs and cutaways that the series is notorious for make their way into the video game, and are made into mini-games that range from Stewie's Sexy Party to a fire truck hunting in the African plains to Stewie playing Marco Polo with Helen Keller. Each time you successfully complete a mini-game, the abilities of the game's characters are improved, upgrading your abilities and allowing the Griffins to cause more carnage in their various tasks.

In the build that we saw, things were looking pretty solid on the whole, but not without a few issues. The game uses the tried and true cel-shading approach, which allows for a cartoony look that suits Family Guy just fine, with the only difference being the added third dimension. On the downside, when characters moved around the environments, it looked like a few frames were missing, making for some choppy animations, which wound up being distracting. Another issue was that audio syncing was a bit off, so when characters started talking, it often took a second or two for the character's animations to match up with the actual speech. Though these issues were present for the preview build, we were promised that they will be fixed for the final build.

As near as we can tell, the story has enough to sate the appetites of fans who simply want as much Family Guy as they can get their hands on. Whether or not the gameplay can measure up to the story remains to be seen. Keep an eye out for a full review when the game is released this October, and we'll let you know whether it's a winner like the giant chicken or if it's more like Meg.